Just finished this stage – it was like hell.
The same stage that killed my bike in dakar 2011.

The first 400 km I drove just great. But we had to stay behind our team fellows and it went slow.
The last 1oo km was fesh-fesh vegetation, tracks in sand and everybody got stuck.
We helped our mates but then the clutch slipped. Paul tried to fix it, but driving was heavy in the sandy tracks. We struggled hard on about 100 km, got even towed by some other car to some 40 km from finish – then we got stuck on a sandy track uphill. Could not proceed anymore, had to spend the night outdoors.

Clutch

In the morning the cluth had cooled and worked a little better. We went on with great effort. We also let air out of tires to make it upphill in the sand.
And more problems: power steering broke, almost impossible to turn. So Paul had to drive, we only had time to fix the clutch before restart.
In stage we also had flat tyre, broke a wishbone, and got stuck in the fesh-fesh. All adding up to another late finish. Paul was really tired after musceling the car without power steering.

We arrived at the bivouac in the morning. And we can continue to the stage 3! We have 2 hours for service, then we hit the road again.